Sunswept
by kingdomskeys
Summary: These days, Traverse Town Hotel is occupied mostly by ghosts.


Business has been bad lately, she reflects as she straightens the bed sheets on yet another unused bed, in yet another room that has been empty for a very long time now. She frowns at the layer of dust that seems to have settled on everything despite the fact that she just cleaned up_ yesterday_. Although, really, there isn't much point to cleaning up here anymore.

These days, Traverse Town Hotel is occupied mostly by ghosts.

Lecia doesn't really mind too much, actually. She's been alone for far too long to be bothered such things. There was once a time when she lived in a wind-swept desert, where such things as 'darkness' and 'cold' barely existed, where the light of the sun was bright enough to burn away thoughts of such things…but, of course, even the sun wasn't able to stop the darkness from coming in and taking over. When the sun still held court, however, Lecia had had friends and family in Nabradia.

She tries to make a point of not making that same mistake again.

Not that she's antisocial or anything; you can't really own a hotel and be so. But Lecia doesn't hope in the same way she did when she first bought the hotel, when she first thought that sooner or later _someone_ had to stumble across her, to find her, to need a shelter for a night. Surely she'd run into someone sooner or later. She was young then, and optimistic, and she hadn't yet forgotten the feel of the warm sun on her bare shoulders.

She chose not to go back when all the broken worlds were remade, though. Of course she knows that they were remade. How could she not? One day Traverse Town was lively and bustling as always, and the next it was a ghost town, a forgotten place. Empty. She is somewhat surprised that whatever force took everyone back home apparently forgotten her, but Lecia has a theory about that. She didn't actually_ want_ to go home, so she didn't. It seems silly, she knows, that she of all people didn't want to go home. She, who still dreams of how blue the sky used to get in Nabradia; who never got used to this 'winter' thing that exists in Traverse Town; who still aches for the wild, warm days when she would run barefoot until she would collapse, giggling, the sand turning her hair golden, and admit defeat before her brothers tickled her to death.

She doesn't think anyone would recognize her now, anyway. She no longer keeps her hair cropped, an old habit from when it was such a pain to have to wash out the inevitable sand grains, and now it's now a dark amber without the sun to bleach it. She's paler now, too, for the same reason. She dresses for the dark and cold weather here and is never without a dagger these days—just in case. Neither Heartless nor people are trustworthy, after all.

A stray ray of light dazzles her momentarily, bringing Lecia back to earth. She blinks, turning her head away from the beam as the sparkles in her vision fade.

"Stupid," she mutters, crossing to the window and drawing the faded curtains. "Getting caught up in my thoughts."

Home is where the heart is, she knows, and her heart does not lie in the surely now-ravaged Nabradia. Her heart is in the Nabradia of her memories, the one clean and pure and free from even the mere whisper of Heartless. She does not want to go back to a place that will most certainly prove to disappoint. She can never really go home again, after all. It's not like everyone will be the same, either…

Time passes; things change.

Lecia isn't too bitter about it all, though. She's made her choice, and she'll stick to it. She refuses to complain when she really could have gone the other way.

Someone knocks on the door to the room she's standing in, startling her.

"Sorry," a masculine voice apologizes, and it brings to back to her thoughts of a moment before, of a jewel-bright sky shining down on subtly shifting hills.

She turns slowly, a half-smile playing on her lips.

"_Lecia_?"

"Hey, stranger," she laughs.

Yes, home is where the heart is, and sometimes it can find its own way to a person.

* * *

Heh, hope this was any good. It turned out to be more Lecia-heavy than I'd originally planned, but hey. Someone has to own that hotel.

Only Lecia belongs to me.


End file.
